Google confirms store visits, store sales reporting data incorrect from 4/28 on

Google has confirmed that store visits and store sales data has been impacted by the bug that hit Google Ads reporting more than a week ago.

New information. Store visits and store sales reporting is inaccurate as of 12:01 PDT on April 28, Google said in an update to its blog post on the bug Wednesday evening. We had heard from readers who had been told about this by their reps, but Google did not clarify this aspect of the bug until now.

Google also confirmed that the bug only affected reporting, not automated bidding: “Google Ads bid strategy & Local campaign users do not need to take any action, as our bidding models are not impacted by the incorrect data.”

What we knew. Google posted a notice in the web UI on May 2 and published the blog post with further details early that morning, alerting advertisers that a bug caused Google Ads reporting for April 30 and May 1 to be incorrect.

On May 6, Google said reporting was corrected for April 30 but was still working to correct reporting from 12:01am on May 1 to 4:00am May 2 (PDT).

Why we should care. Hold off on reporting store visit and sales conversion data, and put an asterisk on any weekly or monthly reporting you’ve already completed that encompasses the affected time frame.

There was no mention that store visits and store sales data was incorrect going back to April 28, and that it’s still incorrect, until Wednesday evening. In fact, the May 2 update to the Google Ads Developer Blog post notes — in red — that, “All other data is now accurate.”

The reporting discrepancies appeared to be fairly minimal, making it nearly impossible to tell there was problem.

As of 10:30pm ET on May 8, the alert in the Google Ads web UI that May 1 reporting is not correct was no longer showing for me. I don’t recall dismissing it, but you should still be seeing the message when you log in.

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About The Author

Ginny Marvin

Ginny Marvin was Third Door Media’s former Editor-in-Chief (October 2018 to December 2020), running the day-to-day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin wrote about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.